Pike: Sometimes Bigger Is Better

Dear readers,

I was fishing for pike last weekend. I wanted to test how paddletail shads work on my lake. Well, I went through several lures and I fished for two hours without any bites. After that I didn't change the spot, but changed the lure type. So I switched to a 20 cm Savage Gear Line-Thru Trout, and on the first cast I had a bite (but lost the fish). A few casts later I got a nice pike of 5,8 kg. It's not always about finding the right color, but the right action. You just can't be blind with one type of a lure, and think this is going to work 365 days a year. In my opinion, you will have more constant fishing with a range of different lure types than having a single lure type with all the color variations. You won't probably have the best color of the day, but you will have less blank days.

Oh yes - the topic of this blog was big lures. I found out that 20 cm lure is too small, so I changed it to a 30 cm Line-Thru Trout. And I started to catch pike with it. Even the small 2-3 kg pike were hitting the lure viciously. A 30 cm lure is just a snack for the big pike.

But hey, I'm just a beginner on pike fishing. Don't believe me :) 

A 20 cm Savage Gear Line-Thru Trout is in all kinds of trouble here!

Pike: Comfortably Fat and Spotted

So, you've never heard of spotted carp (besides some koi). Well there's no koi carp in Finland. This blog entry is again about pike. Fishing lakes, to be precise.

Some might say that my catches are rather modest considering the size of the pike I am catching. I don't actually care, because I am having way too much fun fishing. And that is what I want when I go out of my door.

I was fishing last weekend:

On Saturday I managed to catch some pike (up to 3,5kg) with Savage Gear Hard Eel 25 cm. I then switched to spinnerbait (Da'Bush) and headed up close to the reeds. Some 5-7 smallish pike from there (up to 2,5 kg), and after this I decided to head back for deeper waters. The big pike weren't hanging around the reeds (at least for now on this spot). I browsed through my lure box for something different that I could use on deeper water - and still have a strong swimming action on slower speeds. Luckily I had one 20cm Savage Gear Line-Thru Trout (Albino) in my lure box, so I decided to give it a try. I had two casts which were not producing anything. On the third cast, I had two strikes which I couldn't connect. I was devastated. The fourth cast was empty, but just next to the boat a pike struck the lure viciously! I was thinking that this is just another 3kg pike... wrong. The rod bent quite steeply and I started to think this was not a 3kg pike. After a strong scrap just below my boat I got the fish into the landing net. A nicely formed pike (you could see the belly from above the fish) Nice! The next cast I connected again. The scrap was still quite hard - and I managed to net even a bigger pike than the last one.

A different pike (and heavier) than the one on the picture below. Pike are absolutely magnificient creatures! Treat them with respect.

 

Well... actually you DO look a bit fat!

My trip on Sunday started quite nicely. First cast with the same line-thru trout resulted in 4,5 kg pike and the second cast (bite already on the drop!) got me a fat 5 kg pike. (These were smaller than the ones I had on Saturday, but they are still really nice fish in my standards.) I had some really fantastic pike fishing, changing lures from every now and then - catching totally around 25 pike in 4 hours of fishing. Cannot really complain. I must get some resin to fix all my swimbaits...